Resume Enhancement

Ferguson

P-D:

Ferguson’s notoriety cuts both ways, drawing interest as well as contempt

Protesters waved signs at Patrick Melvin II as he drove through town one late October day, but he didn’t have time to read what they said.

Melvin was focused on finding Ferguson police headquarters, hoping an interview would land him a law enforcement internship to work alongside the officers at the center of national controversy over police tactics and race.

Now, about one month into that internship, the Harris-Stowe State University senior from Phoenix said Thursday that he wants to pin on a Ferguson badge.

But he’ll have to get in line. A long one.

The department has received more than 1,000 applications for one open dispatcher’s position. The 20 or so applications on file for a patrolman’s opening have about doubled since Officer Darren Wilson shot unarmed teenager Michael Brown on Aug. 9. That spot remains unfilled, as do vacancies from two newer resignations: from Wilson and one other officer.

And he, a young black man from a city 1500 interstate highway miles away, should get the job over any local white applicants, because Michael Brown.  Also it says a lot about this “great” economy that you have a thousand people applying for one civilian job and twenty people applying for one patrol position.  Also note the severe disparity between the thousand applications for the job that has exceedingly little risk of you getting in a conflagration with a gentle giant of Ferguson and the only twenty for a job where that risk is high.  A lot of people want to be able to tell the next Darren Wilson where to go, but not many people want to be the next Darren Wilson.

Invitations for public appearances are sending Ferguson officials such as Police Chief Thomas Jackson and Mayor James Knowles III across the country.

Since when is everyone across the country interested in an over the hill suburb of a flyover metropolitan area?

Melvin said he had applied to several other police departments but sees Ferguson as the best fit, despite a federal investigation into possible racism in the department. He has a natural call to police work: His father is chief of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community Police Department, in Arizona.

The father of a young black man is the police chief of an Indian reservation.  I presume the father is also black.  So how does it come to be that black men get to lead Indian reservation police departments?